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The suspects are residents of the former Soviet Central Asia region like the bomber, the Investigative Committee said. The impoverished, predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia are seen as fertile ground for Islamic extremists.

Russian security agents on Thursday arrested three suspected of links to the subway bombing on Monday.
(Dmitri Lovetsky / AP)

By Irina TitovaVladimir IsachenkovThe Associated Press

Thu., April 6, 2017

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA—Russian security agents on Thursday arrested three people suspected of links to a suicide bomber accused of attacking the city’s subway and deactivated an explosive device in the apartment where they lived.

The Investigative Committee said the suspects are residents of the former Soviet Central Asia region like the bomber, 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a native of Kyrgyzstan. Dzhalilov blew himself up on a busy subway line Monday, killing himself and 13 others and wounding over 50 people.

The impoverished, predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia are seen as fertile ground for Islamic extremists, and thousands of their citizens are believed to have joined Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria and Iraq.

The committee, the nation’s top criminal investigation agency, said investigators also found objects that would help advance the probe during a search of the home on St. Petersburg’s eastern outskirts.

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People gather to commemorate the victims of the subway blast at The Field of Mars in Saint Petersburg on Wednesday. The bombing killed 13 people and wounded over 50. (OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

The Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that its experts defused a self-made explosive device at the apartment. The news reports said three people were arrested.

A leading St. Petersburg news portal, Fontanka.ru, said materials used in the explosive device found Thursday matched those used by militants in Syria.

An unidentified law enforcement official told the Tass news agency that investigators were checking information that Dzhalilov may have trained with Daesh in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet republics were fighting alongside Daesh and other militants in Syria. He has named Daesh as one of the reasons behind Russia’s military campaign in Syria in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Reports emerge that the St. Petersburg metro blast, which killed 14 people, was the work of a suicide bomber, possibly from Kyrgyzstan.

Thursday’s arrest came a day after law enforcement agencies detained eight Central Asian migrants suspected of acting as recruiters for Daesh and Al Qaeda’s Syria branch. The investigators found no immediate evidence of their involvement in the subway attack.

No one has claimed responsibility for Monday’s subway bombing, but Russian trains and planes long have been targeted by bombings by Islamist militants.

One of the victims of Monday’s attack, 50-year-old Irina Medyantseva, an artist well-known for the dolls she made, was buried Thursday in a funeral attended by a few dozen relatives and friends.

“I’m thankful to all those who want to help us,” said her husband, Alexander Kaminskiy. “The country and the entire world share our pain.”

People stand around candles showing the time of the subway bombing as they gather in memory of victims of the tragic event, on Marsovo Polye in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. The bomb blast tore through a subway train under Russia's second-largest city on Monday. (Dmitri Lovetsky/AP)

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